


the best parts of you are now a part of me

by Heather



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fade to Black, Fix-It, Post-Canon, ablelist language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-23 21:23:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20346949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/pseuds/Heather
Summary: Outwardly, Yara was calm: she was returning home as Lady of the Iron Islands, with no appalling uncle to usurp this time. Nor a little brother to compete with, either. She may not be ascending to queen, but her lot in life was at least as good as it was before the War of Five Kings and all the ensuing nonsense that had happened since. She had her ships, her title, her honor, and a place at the table in Westeros whenever she wanted it. It was more than her father had had. Her men would only see her acceptance.Inwardly, she was seething.





	the best parts of you are now a part of me

**Author's Note:**

> FOR #7

The walk back to Yara's ship from what _had_ been intended as Tyrion Lannister's trial- the fucking bastard- was the longest, most resentful walk she had ever taken in her life. 

Outwardly, Yara was calm: she was returning home as Lady of the Iron Islands, with no appalling uncle to usurp this time. Nor a little brother to compete with, either. She may not be ascending to queen, but her lot in life was at least as good as it was before the War of Five Kings and all the ensuing nonsense that had happened since. She had her ships, her title, her honor, and a place at the table in Westeros whenever she wanted it. It was more than her father had had. Her men would only see her acceptance.

Inwardly, she was seething. 

By what right did Tyrion Lannister nominate himself Kingmaker? What brotherhood did he share with the Starks that he had given Sansa the North and set the cripple boy on the throne? The power of stories, her giddy aunt; Lannister had nominated someone he could control, she'd stake her life on it. And one with a convenient escape plan, at that: The boy looked as if he rolled around constantly in a dream even without the benefit of drink or strong embrocation, and a stoned, crippled man who got out of line could probably fall down some stairs easier than one who was neither.

Yara headed for her quarters. She needed a drink.

As she descended the stairs to the belly of her ship, her eyes had a struggle to adjust. It was darker than usual down here. She rubbed her eyes against the slight burn and the colorful blurs that had taken over her vision and asked, with as much patience as she could muster, "Are you still having trouble with the light? Or were you just worried someone would see you?"

A dark shape uncoiled on Yara's bed. The voice that answered was wry and bitter. "Can I not do both?" She barely pretended to wait for an answer. "How did it go?"

Yara grit her teeth and stomped over to the sideboard where she kept her ale. The first cup she could find in here was a tin one so small, it might have been for giving medicine to a babe. Yara gave it a hateful look. It would take twenty of these to make her as drunk as she wanted to be. _Well, then,_ she thought, _I'd better get started._ She poured herself a cup and bolted it down as fast as she could, then poured another.

Months in the Red Keep's dungeon had left Ellaria Sand's eyes suited to work in the dark. Yara could hear her chuckling at what she saw. "That good, I see."

"We've a new king," Yara said. Just saying the word called for another glass of ale. 

"Already?" Ellaria sounded surprised. "I thought you were here to hang the last living Lannister." She said this with a tone of betrayal, as though it was something Yara had promised her personally and then denied. 

"He talked his way out of it," Yara said. "Again." Another cup. "It's almost enough to make you wonder if he really is blessed by the gods."

Ellaria snorted. "No man is blessed by the gods, least of all that one. Who is he?"

Yara puzzled at the sudden transition. "Lannister?"

"The new king," Ellaria said. 

"Ah." Yara put aside the cup to rifle around for a loaf of bread and a lump of cheese that she remembered leaving down here the night before. No good plotting murder on an empty stomach. "You should be gratified to hear, my lady, that it is not Lannister himself- though it might as well be." She bit off a hunk of cheese and swallowed it without tasting. "Though it may as well be. He's nominated the youngest Stark child. And the fools voted with him."

Ellaria laughed sickly. "You joke."

"I do, but not about this," she said. She tore off a piece of bread crust, then thought the better of it and dipped it in the ale before shoving it into her mouth. 

"He's given himself a puppet, and no one stopped him?" Ellaria asked. "At his own trial?"

"Ha. Would you like a drink?" Yara asked.

There was a pause. "If you've got anything Dornish, I will take it."

She gave her something Dornish. Ellaria pulled straight from the bottle. Yara drank another cup of ale.

"You said the fools voted," Ellaria said. "Which fools?"

"Didn't recognize half of them," she said. But she thought she knew what Ellaria was really asking. "Anders Yronwood was one. As Prince of Dorne."

Ellaria hissed like a cat and spat out, "Oberyn has five living daughters. Four of them are mine."

Yara wasn't in the mood to coddle anyone else crying over a lost throne. "Bastards don't get the job," she said. "You let him fuck you for years without giving your daughters his name, that seems to be more your fault than Yronwood's."

"You dare," Ellaria said.

"I damn well do," Yara said. "You'd still be rotting under one of the bells of the Red Keep if it weren't for me, so you might consider swallowing that outrage." She shouldn't have said that. Against her will, she remembered the shape Ellaria had been in when Yara had found her: a pale, half-starved skeleton, gibbering madness, her hands bloody and near-skinless from where she'd tried to punch and claw her way out. The thought of it made her anger at the Lannisters flare up again, and nearly drowned her with regret on top of it. Just a few feet away from where she'd found Ellaria, she'd found Ellaria's daughter. Madam Sand, when Yara found her, had been trapped under the rubble for something like three weeks. Her daughter, still wearing her chains to the remnants of the wall, had been dead a lot longer than that.

"Fuck you," she said.

Yara drank. "You're right. I'm sorry."

Ellaria glared hard at her for another minute, then seemed to wilt onto the bed. For a person sustained all but entirely on hatred, anger still weakened her if she held on for more than a minute.

Yara moved onto the bed next to her, laying a hand on her back. "Really. I am."

She waved it away, then turned over and put her head in Yara's lap. "What do we do now?"

Yara stroked her hair even as she let out a bitter laugh. "What can you possibly imagine this changes?" she asked. "I have a fleet to get us back to Dorne, collect your girls, and get you all to Essos where no one might suddenly remember you killed the last prince. That was good enough for you this morning."

"This morning, I thought that at least the last Lannister would die," she said. She curled closer to Yara and though her voice was no different, Yara could feel tears soaking her thigh. She lifted Ellaria's head from her lap so she could lie beside her and gather her up in her arms. Ellaria let her. "I thought that I would see Oberyn's justice finished at last. Now it was all for nothing."

Yara squeezed her close. "If I could do it for you, I would. I'd hang his little corpse off the Kingsport docks and take you in a boat by night to watch him swing."

"i would have liked that," Ellaria said.

"I would, too," she replied. Her teeth clenched. "He knew she meant for me to be queen of the Iron Islands in my own right. He knew that was the promise I was made in return for my promise to fight for them. But it's Lannister's wife who's being crowned Queen in the North and I am once again a lady." Yara didn't have anything personal against Sansa Stark, but that shit still stung.

"I am sorry," Ellaria said. She sounded sincere.

"Not your fault," Yara said. She lowered her head to lie on Ellaria's breasts while Ellaria stroked her hair. "Maybe I will just wait until a convenient dark night and hang him from the Kingsport docks." 

Ellaria chuckled. "That might give you problems with your new king." She kissed Yara's forehead. "Just send him a cask of poisoned wine from Essos."

Yara laughed. "Dornish, of course."

"Of course," she said.

"That might give me problems with the new king, too," Yara said.

"Only if they suspect you," Ellaria said. "Why would the Iron Lady send Dornish wine?"

"Certainly not because she was taken in by a Dornish lady," Yara said, gently biting her ear.

Ellaria hissed again. "What Dornish lady?" she asked. "Ellaria Sand is dead."

Yara let go of her ear and held her close. "It's not as though we have to figure out how to murder him right away, you know."

"Oh?" Ellaria asked, finding Yara's nipple through her tunic and pinching hard.

Yara sucked in a breath through her teeth. "I could stay with you where we're going," she said. "Take some time to plan the thing properly."

Ellaria stopped and looked at her for a moment. "What about your people?"

"The Geyjoys have gone raiding at sea for months at a time for as long as they've been called the Iron Islands. I wouldn't be missed." Yara let out a derisive snort. "Even if I were, I'm sure Tyrion fucking Lannister could find someone suitable to replace me."

Ellaria continued to toy with her breast, silently thinking. "If you murder the Hand of the King," she said, "you know you could never go back."

Yara ran her fingers through Ellaria's hair. "Given everything that's happened, all that I have seen, all the promises that were broken," she said, "why would I ever want to go back?"

Ellaria kissed her once, twice, then a third time, like she was sealing her understanding in. She crawled out of Yara's arms to lie on her back on the pillows, lifting her skirts. "Give me your mouth," she said, "then talk to me more about murder."

Yara grinned and slid down between Ellaria's thighs. "I can do that."


End file.
